Did you just get your first drone? Or maybe you are assembling it, and you are trying to get your xm+ flashed with the right firmware. Maybe you have been flying FPV for years and you need a quick refresher to flash your xm+. No matter who you are, this article will help you flash your xm+.
Materials Needed
In order to flash your xm+ you will need:
- A servo plug with wires (JR connector)
- A soldering iron
- Solder
- An xm+ (you can buy it here)
- A radio with a module bay (alternatively, some radios have a smart port that you can plug into)
- A computer
- An SD card
Preparing the xm+ reciever
In order to get the xm+ ready to flash you need to get the servo plug hooked up.
In order to know how to get the servo plug soldered to your xm+ you need to know if you are using a smart port or the module bay on your radio.
The smart port and module bay have different wiring sequences so you could brick your receiver if you wire it wrong. In order to flash your xm+ you need a voltage pin, a ground pin and a S.Port pin.
Please refer to your controllers user manual in order to figure out the pinout of its module bay. I have included a picture of FrSky smart port pinout on a QX7 and the pinout of the module bay on a QX7.
After you have figured out what the pins in your module bay are, you need to solder your servo plug. please refer to my picture as an example of how to do this.
After you have soldered your servo plug to your xm+, you are ready to move on to the next step.
Preparing the controller
In this section we will be preparing the radio to flash the xm+ by downloading the correct firmware to it.
Depending on what kind of controller you have, this should be pretty easy to do with an SD card and a computer.
- To start, you need to go to this page and download the correct firmware. For most people this would be the newest firmware. The firmware on your xm+ needs to match the firmware on your radio. For a tutorial on how to update your radios firmware click HERE.
- After you have downloaded the firmware, put your SD card in your computer and add the firmware to it. Alternatively, for radios without an SD card port, you can usually just plug the radio in to the computer as a mass storage device and add the firmware straight to the radio.
- After the firmware is added to the SD card then put the SD card into your controller. (You can skip this step if you downloaded the firmware straight to your radio.
Now you are ready to flash the firmware!
Flashing the firmware
In this section we will be flashing the firmware to your xm+.
To flash the firmware to your xm+ you need your xm+ with the servo plug connected with the right wire order and your controller with the firmware you need to flash.
- First, plug the servo lead on your reciever into either the smart port or the module bay on your controller, depending on which you wired the xm+ for.
- After you plug this is go to your firmware folder in your radio and long press on the xm+ firmware you need to flash.
- Then select either flash smart port (s-port) or external module (depending on what you are using).
After it is done flashing you can unplug the xm+.
Final Thoughts
After you desolder the servo plug off the xm+ you are done! Your xm+ is now ready to be wired to a flight controller and bound to a radio.
Now that you have your XM+ flashed, the next step is wiring to your flight controller and binding to your radio!
You can buy the XM+ from Amazon, or any other popular drone store!
Please leave any questions down below and we will try to answer then as soon as possible. Also let us know if you use the smart port or the module bay to flash your xm+!
Jerome
Sunday 3rd of July 2022
Do I have to flash xm for jumper t pro